"We have many train wreck pictures," says Marcy Thompson, local history librarian at Transylvania County Library.

Railroad and logging work were dangerous occupations, and Joe Wilde, a logging crew foreman and photographer, was on site for a number of them. The wreck he captured here, at Bent Field in northwest Transylvania County in 1928, was less disastrous than most.

"A log train with about seven loaded cars was headed down to Rosman," Thomas Fetters reports in his 2007 book, "Logging Railroads of the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains."

The passengers that day included a woman and her baby going to their doctor. When the loaderman, named Hartman, heard the trestle groan under the weight of the engine (Gloucester Lumber Company Shay No. 2), he "grabbed the woman and her baby and walked her along the sideboards… [On] the side opposite the flailing pistons, the weakened trestle gave way and the first two log cars fell into the river, dragging the Shay back and down."

Wilde had graduated from Mars Hill College, was trained as an Army photographer in World War I and upon arriving home, took a job supervising logging crews in Pisgah Forest. Some of his adventures have been fictionalized by his daughter, Exie Henson, in her novels, "Beyond This Mountain" and "Mountain Song." This photograph is courtesy of Exie Henson; information assistance came from the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room at the Transylvania County Library.